running

I've never been much of a runner, so I've only taken my phone with me for a lap around the neighborhood a handful of times. When I did, it felt Runtastic. But the Nike+ Running app has been another option for people looking to set goals and track their progress.

A number of fitness-oriented apps popped up over the past few years and attracted users with ways to track their workouts. Whether it's counting calories or mapping out runs, people have embraced the concept by the millions.

Human's activity and fitness tracker has been available on iOS since 2013, but it has just decided to get its running shoes on and ride to the Android side. The app takes a passive approach to activity tracking, working in the background on your phone to figure out everything (walks, runs, bike rides) you've done throughout the day. If this sounds familiar, it's because it's very similar to Google Fit or to the previous "celebrity" in the category, Moves.

Where Human is slightly different is in its focus on trying to make you actively move more throughout the day.

A very long-awaited update to Google Fit began rolling out earlier this week, but it seemed to focus almost entirely on improvements to the Wear micro-app while the main app was all but ignored. As it turns out, that was a mistake. A fresh update to the app started rolling out yesterday and it brings the rest of the features that were intended for this release – and what a list of features they are.

Note: Everything here was about to be part of a teardown, but the update stole that thunder.

Spotify Running has been available for quite some time now, first on iOS, but also for Android users who signed up for beta updates. These folks got to try things out back in June. Now Spotify has officially announced the feature's availability for regular premium subscribers with Android devices.

Sony announced the Smart B-Trainer at this year's CES as part of its continued efforts to log your life. This fitness-oriented device isn't the wrist band you might expect. Instead, it's a headset. Now Sony has provided a few more details, including a launch time frame. The Smart B-Trainer is scheduled to hit the US this fall.

The SSE-BTR1 headphone-integrated device comes with six sensors. There's a barometer and gyroscope, along with the tech required to measure your acceleration, cardinal direction, GPS location, and heart rate.

The companion app lets you log your runs. This means tracking how far you ran, how long you took, how high you went, how many steps, how quickly you moved, how many calories you burned in the process, and a number of other measurements.

The more seat bound and satisfied among our readers may be surprised to know that there are no shortage of Android apps out there that want to track how you run. Actually, maybe not. All that time spent on the computer probably means a greater likelihood of running across this post and the many like it than someone who's out running. Either way, the Nike+ app has managed to reach version 1.7 without spraining something, and it has picked up a few new features along the way.

This release comes with an updated home screen. When you sign-in, you will now see a leaderboard preview at the bottom that compares your runs to those of your friends, assuming you know people who also use the app.

And now, we interrupt our Google I/O coverage to bring you this health bulletin.

Runtastic is one of the few apps that are commendable for quickly - really quickly - adapting to any new Android releases, options, or APIs. Today, the app is keeping its track record of jumping head-first into new features by adding an always-on mode for Android Wear watches.

You don't need to do anything for the function to work - that is if your Wear watch is already on Android 5.1.1, which enables always-on mode for apps. When you start a new Runtastic activity, the card will show up on your watch. Tap it to expand for the full details, and if you don't touch your watch for a few seconds, the app goes into always-on mode, inverting its colors for less power consumption but still presenting all the details that you've picked.